Essential Goodreads Giveaway Promotion Checklist

So you’ve paid for a new Goodreads giveaway, or plan to. What other author marketing strategies do you have lined up to support it?

This is a crucial element to all book marketing and any book marketing company worth their salt will tell you this. In addition to coming up with promotions or book marketing strategies, you must find additional ways you can easily support the bigger picture stuff.

For a Goodreads giveaway, you now have Goodreads supporting your efforts even more. If you’re not fully up to date on all the benefits check out my recent post that goes into detail. But that’s only one piece of this author marketing strategy!

Below is a list of additional ways you can support your Goodreads giveaway. Hopefully this will also give you a solid example of why your author marketing efforts should have a spider web-like approach.

Author marketing isn’t free. We should all know that by now. But by supporting the strategies you do invest in, with less free efforts and some good planning, you’ll get a lot better return.

Consider national versus international

Sure this isn’t strictly a promotional tip, but it’s a sales tip. Keep in mind Amazon owns Goodreads, and Amazon is integrating more of its international sites with its main US site. If you haven’t checked your sales stats on Amazon lately do so before setting up your Goodreads giveaway.

You may be surprised your book is selling really well in a foreign market that you’ll want to include, and the shipping cost will be worth the additional exposure.

If you’re doing print consider sweetening the deal

I like doing print books because I like including a special note and branded swag with my packages. If you’re like me and just prefer print, or can’t take advantage of the KDP eBook option, use print to your benefit.

Plan to include a personalized note with the books. Maybe consider signing the copies. Or, can you throw something in with the package that makes it more of a gift pack than just a book?

If you can, be sure to highlight all these special additions in the description of the giveaway, and definitely in all the other author promotions you’re doing, which I’ll get into below.

Create an event on Goodreads

Once your giveaway is approved, create an event. Include the link to the giveaway and invite everyone in your network. In the message to your network, ask them to invite others as a way to get the word out. Be sure to thank them for their support as well and you could even say you hope they invite you to their next giveaway event. And set the event reminder!

Create a blog post on your website or on your Goodreads blog

If you have a website, create a short and sweet post to remind those who follow you that you’re running a giveaway. Yes, these people probably already have the book, but they should still enter and ask them to share! There’s a ‘most requested’ tab on the Goodreads giveaway page that you should aim to be on.

Use the Goodreads giveaway widget

If you’re pretty comfortable using your WordPress site or have a flexible relationship with your website manager, then take advantage of the giveaway widget. It’s free – you should do everything that’s free! Especially when it boosts the author marketing exposure your giveaway will net you.

Announce the giveaway in your genre groups

Many genre groups welcome authors with open arms. And you should already be an active contributor that people recognize and look forward to communicating with. If not, there’s another item to add to your author marketing plan!

But when it comes to promoting yourself or your books, even a Goodreads giveaway, most groups have rules and provide a specific discussion thread for authors to use. Take advantage of it. And as with everything on Goodreads, be gracious. Remind them how much their participation and support helps you reach you readers.

Schedule posts on social media

Social media scheduling is a beautiful thing. I love it because it helps take some of the weight off my shoulders for any book marketing I can plan in advance.

So get on your social accounts and schedule posts at reasonable intervals to remind your fans and followers that you’re running a Goodreads giveaway. Let them know how much you’d appreciate their shares, re-tweets and love.

Countdowns are fun on social media, and it helps you talk about your giveaway more often, in a fun way. So three days left, one day left, 6 hours left!

Send out a special announcement to your email list

If you have a newsletter or an email list, send them a special announcement about the giveaway, again, ask them very graciously to forward the opportunity to their most book-centric friends or friends that they know are fans of their genre. Especially if they belong to a book club!

Email your super fans

Super fans are a different level of fan love. If you’re unsure who these people are I’ve written about them before and I encourage you to check it out after you’re done reading this post.

Send a note to your super fans and ask them to share the giveaway with their networks, do what they do best, do what super fans do! And as usual with super fans you owe them big, bigger than a thank you, so have something special lined up for them. Maybe it’s swag, a sneak peak at a chapter you’re working on for your next release – make it good.

Schedule a discount eBook promotion to immediately follow

You’re going to have a lot of avid book lovers vying for a copy of your book. How much do you want to bet a lot of these same people are signed up for different eBook newsletters that promote discounts?

Get your book lined up for a discount eBook promo to immediately follow the Goodreads giveaway. This will help you maximize the attention of people who have been introduced to your title (but didn’t win a copy) and give them a chance at the next best thing to free – a discount.

On the Goodreads giveaway page there are also tabs for ‘ending soon’ and ‘recently listed’ and these are attention-getting.

You can work these to your advantage by doing shorter giveaways for fewer books if you’re doing print, or just shorter if you’re doing Kindle.

So play with this book marketing strategy a bit and see what gets you the biggest return.

If you’re doing print, perhaps running a giveaway for 5 copies that only lasts a week will get you more engagement than 10 copies for two weeks, because your giveaways quickly fell down the list.

If you’re doing Kindle I don’t suggest running them for more than a week, 10 days tops. Because not only do you slide down the list, you also lose the excitement and the immediacy you can generate by promoting a Goodreads giveaway that ends more quickly.

And excitement is part of the momentum you’ll need to start selling more books. If you’d like my advice on what else you can be doing to build this momentum, click here to set up a custom assessment!

What have you already tried to further promote your Goodreads giveaways? I’d love to read your creative book marketing ideas in the comments section!